STILL - Katzman Art Projects

So when the storms of wild emotion
Strike the ocean
Of the poet’s soul, erelong
From each cave and rocky fastness,
In its vastness,
Floats some fragment of a song.
-Longfellow. Seaweed.

‘STILL’ is collection of works centered around the beauty, chaos, and unpredictability of the human experience. Moving through the culmination of love, loss, death, rebirth, fear, and growth, all at once, and the moments of incredible clarity, stillness, and presence that peaks through in and amongst the storm of emotion. And in those moments, remembering the significance of our insignificance, and that we are in fact nature, and a storm by any name affects us as the tide to the beach, the wind to the forest, the rain to the earth.

Kristina Søbstad

Kristina Søbstad is a Canadian-Norwegian visual artist currently based on the Eastern shore of Nova Scotia. Søbstad earned a BFA from NSCAD University in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 2010.

Søbstad’s work involves abstracted landscape paintings on canvas. “I seek to embody movement in my work by synthesizing sound, form, and colour, resulting in unexpected juxtapositions. My process is intuitive and involves a full immersion into the natural environment: documenting, sketching, exploring, engaging, experiencing. These aren’t little dates, an afternoon with my easel overlooking a pretty vista. These are full-blown, love affairs that last weeks if not months, where I get close and intimate. I go deep on the trails and getting covered in mud, burrs and swamp; I wade the tidal pools and palpate mussels to find pearls; I seek out the hidden with patience and quiet respect, like the bioluminescent algae on Middle Cove Beach (Newfoundland) where thousands of people have spent time and very few have seen. I translate memory-sensory, autobiographical, emotional, muscle into physical form on canvas using expressive gestural brush strokes, and thoughtful deliberate mark making. My environmental interests are the underpinnings of my practice. My focus on remote or isolated communities arose from experiencing, exploring and learning distinct ways of being in these places compared to urban settings.”